Going up and coming down from the Great Wall

As I posted a couple od days ago, I went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall on Sunday. It's about 2 hours Northeast of Beijing and was built during the Ming Dynasty (15th century) by General Xu Da. The Wall here rides along the top of the mountains and represents a bit of a challange to climb.
The heat, humidity and my lazy demeanour, meant that I opted for the easy way up.
The chairlift runs 550 ft and takes about 5 minutes. Growing up in Canada, I'm was used to taking ski-lifts, so the openess of the seat or height didn't bother me.
You can see in the second picture that many of the chairs were being used to ferry up a puzzling passenger. It didn't take long for me to understand what it was.
The bobsled run is the way you get down. More on that later.
The section of the wall I visited, is a bit further from Beijing but less touristy and crowded than Badaling, which is the usual stop on the tours from Beijing. I took the advice of a German Chinese studies professor to visit Mutianyu, and I'm glad I did.


After about an hour walking and climbing , I was starting to wilt from the heat and decided to to take a rather unique route back down. The ticket for the "skidding " trip had the following conditions of use:

• Patients with heart disease, hypertension, dizziness or those on whom medicines have effects cannot ride the skid
• People who are drunk can not ride
• Don't touch the skid

No helmet. No safety instructions.

Here's how its descibed on the brochure:

"Toboggan mixed sports and entertainment and became a new amusement project. It is also called 'nonirrigated farland sled'. Toboggan uses the theory of acceleration of gravity and makes coasters dive along the mountain path like low-altitude flying or high-speed driving. Thrilling, amazing, safe and comfortable it also has an auto device make speed be easily controlled by both old and young. Weigang Company in German made this toboggan of stainless steel. It's 1500 meters in total length and in a form of snake takes advantages of different situations to accordance with the mountain path so safely send tourists from Muzihaolu to the foot of the Great Wall"

The "auto device" was a lever that acted as a friction brake.

It sounds more dangerous that it is. By constantly applying the brake, its possible to desend slowly enough that you don't wet your pants.

That's it for today.

I've got one more post detailing the "interesting" events of Monday night.

Love to all

T